Plans
by The Elemental Shark
Summary: “Shoji...Jun...when we’ve all grown up, let’s take over the world.”


Notes: The one line kind of hit me one day and wouldn't go away, though it took a while for anything of remote substance to surface. And then this was spawned.  
It seems like I'm writing everything in present tense these days…I do it by ear (if it sounds or flows better in present tense, I do it in present tense), but it's in most of the fanfiction I write lately. Huh.

Summary: "Shoji…Jun…when we've all grown up, let's take over the world."

Disclaimer: I don't own Yu-gi-oh GX.

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**Plans**

Ambition comes naturally to all three Manjyome brothers. All three of them shine in their respective fields, and they know it. They knew it even when they were young, even before Chosaku came up with the plan.

It'd started shortly after he'd entered university. Shoji was in his second-to-last year of high school; Jun, only seven years old, was still in early elementary school. A friend of Chosaku's at the university had casually commented, "Man, Chosaku! One month and you've got half the place wrapped around your finger. We better watch out, or else you're going to take over the world by the end of the year."

It was only a joke, of course, but it had gotten Chosaku thinking. He was going to become a great politician in the future. There was no doubt about that. Even back in elementary school, he'd always been the class president, popular and powerful, loved by everybody that truly mattered and even many of those that didn't. Maybe one day he _could_ take over the world, given enough effort.

But of course he'd have to include his brothers in it, too. Even those who ruled the world needed _real_ support. The masses fluctuated moodily, ever fickle and indecisive. No, a good politician would need the best support he could find from reliable people, especially for something as grand as taking over the world.

This didn't present much of a problem, though: Jun and Shoji were as capable as he was, if not in politics. Shoji had a way with numbers that demonstrated a more than promising future in finance. Campaigns needed money, and banks needed backing, so that worked out well. Jun was a junior champion of Duel Monsters, which had gained worldwide popularity a few years ago and was still going strong after years, so if things went right that could help boost their reputations as well. (While ruling the world through gaming was a little unorthodox, it was Jun's strongest point, and many children and adolescents were more likely to be impressed by a star duelist than a politician or a financer.)

It was perfect. The plan was perfect, and his brothers thought so as well when he went home during break and told them the words that shaped their life: "Shoji…Jun…when we've all grown up, let's take over the world."

Of course, just because the plan was perfect, that didn't mean the _brothers_ were perfect. Jun in particular had been treated as the black sheep by Shoji and him, because Jun had failed to do his part adequately and failure was not an option. There was no room for failure in their plan, and so failure could not be tolerated, if they were to keep to the plan.

And – though he and Shoji refuse to admit it out loud even now – Jun was also partially the dropout because he was the youngest. When Jun was fifteen, Chosaku was twenty-six, and Shoji was twenty-four. Neither of them had come close to dominating their allotted portion of the world at fifteen, but there were a bunch of young hotshot duelists at eighteen, which wasn't much older, and the two had both been on top of their worlds for a year each at least. They already had two-thirds of the worlds in their hands, and they were overly impatient to grasp that last third and control the world at last.

Pressure, Chosaku supposes, had isolated Jun even more. Desperation was of little benefit to anybody's resolve. Shoji probably had an excuse for not understanding that day before Jun's duel with the strangely named dropout student – his part is the numbers, and only what social skills he needs to make the best possible deals – but Chosaku is the politician. He knows how people think and work, or at least he should have known. He should have foreseen the results of their mistakes as well as Jun's.

Even somebody on the brink of world domination still has things to learn, he muses. He still has to learn that not everybody is forged with the same iron as he is, and that sometimes even steel will bend and break under enough pressure.

It's been over a year since that duel with Jun now. Jun is still officially a part of the Manjyome Group, at least presumably. The last conversation either him or Shoji has had with Jun hadn't ended well, with Jun prattling on a Society of Light and a man named Saiou. A call to Kaiba has only yielded a brisk response that tells them little about the current predicament, only that Kaiba himself cannot do anything about the Society.

Shoji wants to try and intervene; Chosaku objects. If Jun has any real strength to him, he'll do this on his own. He doesn't need help, and Chosaku suspects that he would be indignant should they make any attempt to help. "Just because he's our brother, that doesn't mean we have to coddle him," he reminds Shoji. "We agreed long ago to forget the romantics and be practical, if strict, about things, for the sake of the plan."

The plan.

The plan they forged nine years ago is different now. Since last year, the plan has since been revised and edited around Jun's unspoken withdrawal from the plan. Instead of the Manjyome Group ruling the world, it's Chosaku and Shoji ruling the political and financial worlds and Jun doing whatever exactly it is he does when he's normal, with his counting chant and his insistence on wearing a uniform from one school while attending another.

Jun is still distinctly a Manjyome, but at the same time he is distinctly his own person. It's unorthodox, but Jun himself has always been unorthodox from the start, the youngest-son duelist next to his older brothers, a politician and a financer. That unorthodoxy, really, was probably one of the major reasons why the original plan had failed, aside from the obvious.

Occasionally Chosaku looks back and wonders how all three of them had claimed to abandon all romantic notions of love and caring and whatnot in favor of the plan, yet ignored the biggest romanticism of all: the original plan itself, with its overly grand, simplistic ideals that left no room for reality. It had taken them eight years to realize that the plan was doomed to fail from the start, and even then it had taken until Chosaku's Life Points were draining to zero for him to truly realize it.

He and Shoji still have plans for various possible scenarios now, plans to rule the world. They have plans for if either of them comes upon trouble or if one of them dies unexpectedly. They have plans for any tough new opponents or saboteurs. They've planned out their entire futures so much sometimes he wonders how he can keep it all inside his head, but he stands firm and holds strong so the two of them can rule the more businesslike part of the world. He and Shoji will rule their world and Jun will rule his own, and should their paths cross…

Neither of them has a plan for that, and Chosaku hopes they will never need one.


End file.
